OUR GROUP 23 OF MORNING HOTSHOTS MARCH 27,2016

Nothing in life is obtained except by pain and toil.
This is sad news to us alcoholics who have shunned
both like smallpox most of our lives.

Let the famous musician tell you of his hours of dreary practice, the inventor of his hundred failures for each success, the boxing champ of his endless days of absorbing punishment in empty gymnasiums. Toil and suffering are a necessary prelude to success, and we should bear our crosses not as burdens but as preparations for our ultimate victory===============================Vernon Howard’s SECRETS OF LIFE

“Our Veteran Angel and our Apprentice Angel were flying around

and the apprentice was learning pretty fast. After all these

years he finally got a few things. So they were flying around and

they saw a man down there, and they both went on down and they gave

him an exercise. The Apprentice Angel and the Veteran Angel said to

this man, ‘Now we’re going to give you something to do that’s going

to teach you a very good lesson – I’m talking about you attaining

goodness, and we’ll tell you how.

The angel said, ‘Now here’s what I want you to do. There’s a lake

over there, enormous lake with impure water in it and I want you to

go four times a week and take a little glass of water and pour the

glass of pure water into that impure lake, put it in it. And perhaps

in time it will become pure and then it will be a nice lake, it

won’t be polluted any more.

And the man thought about it. It’s an awfully big lake and he’s

going to just put four glasses of water in it a week. But he

obeyed orders, he went down every week, put the glass of water

in. It didn’t change the lake, but hang on now. And he got to

wondering about it and said, ‘What good am I doing?’ But the

angel said, ‘Keep it up until you understand. Keep up doing what

you are told to do, you keep up with that lesson until you under-

stand what we’re talking about.’

He kept it up, kept up, the lake still didn’t change. One little

glass of water four times a week didn’t do much to purify it.

Finally, he understood what you have to understand, which is this.

Your happiness is in obedience to what you’re told to do, not in

the results of your goodness.”

The Freedom of Being Good=============================Twenty Four Hours A Day March 27,2016

Thought for the Day

You get the power to overcome drinking through the fellowship of other alcoholics who have found the way out. You get power by honestly sharing your past experience by a personal witness. You get power by coming to believe in a Higher Power, the Divine Principle in the universe which can help you. You get power by working with other alcoholics. In these four ways, thousands of alcoholics have found all the power they needed to overcome drinking. Am I ready and willing to accept this power and work for it?

Meditation for the Day

The power of God’s spirit is the greatest power in the universe. Our conquest of each other, the great kings and conquerors, the conquest of wealth, the leaders of the money society, all amount to very little in the end. But one who conquers oneself is greater than one who conquers a city. Material things have no permanence. But God’s spirit is eternal. Everything really worthwhile in the world is the result of the power of God’s spirit.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may open myself to the power of God’s spirit. I pray that my relationships with others may be improved by this spirit.

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The resurrection is the death of the belief that we are separate from God.For death is the illusion alone and not to reality. The science of mind page 413

The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the

mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.

— Bhagavad Gita

Don’t analyze this enthusiasm!

The wheel that lifts some up and drags others down,

we are not riding it anymore.

We have jumped off that good-and-bad.

Rumi (from “Birdsong” translated by Coleman Barks)

ACIM Workbook Lesson 86 Insights

Review:“Only God’s plan for salvation will work.”

and “Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.”

These lessons about grievances are for me lessons about patience. When the ego latches on to a grievance it is like a dog with a bone. I watch the grievance come up again and again, and I know that’s not who I am. And through patience and following Guidance eventually I walk through the cloud and back into the sunlight.

If I perceive a friend appearing to become distant, this calls for salvation, not grievance (attack). In truth, we are joined in Love and there is no distance between us. I could only perceive distance if I perceived separation. If I am looking for some behavior or some signal in form to indicate friendship, I am forgetting the true Friend that we share and are together. Bodies being together in the same room or talking on the phone or writing letters does not make joining. If I look to those forms for indication of connection, I have forgotten what truly joins us. I am looking for unity where unity cannot be found.

I looked at a flower and prayed.
Suddenly, O Spirit, I beheld Thee hiding there.
It exhaled the perfume of Thy presence.
The blush of Thine innocence colored its petals;
the gold of thy wisdom shown in its heart.
Paramahansa Yogananda